AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“That was a good speech.”
“Damn straight.”
“You know you were part of the military-industrial complex, right?”
Caleb chuckled. “Yep. And you just can’t decide what to think about that.” He spread his arms along the back of the couch and put his sock-clad feet up on the coffee table, and the news came back on. When she’d finished her sundae and set the bowl down on the table, he pulled her against his side before she could even start worrying about where she should settle.
A let’s-panic-about-choking-hazards segment came on. “You asked me a personal question,” Caleb observed in a low voice.
“Politics aren’t personal,” she lied.
“The personal is political. Or so I’ve heard.”
Ellen elbowed him in the ribs, and he smiled and pulled her back down, half on top of him this time.
As the so-called news ended and the post-news parade of even more offensive fatheads began, she started to worry that she was enjoying herself too much. Not the politics, but the whole couch-sharing, TV-watching, ice-cream-eating domesticity of the evening he’d created for them. It didn’t violate their contract, but they were definitely becalmed in a gray area here. Had he charted this all out? Had he planned on unsettling her, or was it just the inevitable result of their different priorities for this nonrelationship of theirs?
She sank lower until she was more or less lying with her cheek against his stomach.
“This doesn’t bode well for my massage,” Caleb said.
“Why not?”
“You’re going to fall asleep there.”
“No, I won’t.” She pulled the elastic out of her ponytail and let out a contented sigh.
“You so will. Especially if I play with your hair, which clearly you’re dying for me to do. Girls always fall asleep when you play with their hair.”
“I’m not like most girls. I was going to strip naked as soon as you walked in the door,” she said, and then yawned.
“Really? And look at you now. Cuddling and everything.”
“We’re not cuddling.”
“All right, Ellen. We’re not cuddling.”
His fingers sifted through the strands of her hair, arranging, untangling. They brushed her scalp here and there in tiny, soothing movements. Her eyes drifted closed.
“See, I told you,” he said.
“Shh,” she whispered. “Shh.”
As she listened to arrogant ideologues say things she didn’t agree with, she basked in the sensation of Caleb’s fingers raking over her scalp. The last conscious thought she had before she drifted off was that she could get used to being spoiled like this.
She could get used to Caleb.
She awoke to the feeling of Caleb vibrating with laughter, his taut stomach bouncin
g beneath her cheek. Ellen sat up, bleary and slightly disoriented.
“Sorry,” he said. He was grinning like a loon. “This show cracks me up.”
Ellen turned to see Jon Stewart on the screen. The opening monologue of The Daily Show. “Oh, I like it, too.”
“How about that? We have something in common besides our favorite sexual position.”
“You don’t know my favorite position,” she said defensively.
